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Comment by UNIXgod | Hacker News Reader

This is a classic piece we generally give hackers new to FreeBSD: http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/08

Something to consider, which I should point out because your new, is that without BSD you wouldn't have OSX. There's a little BSD in everything (even windows). Another worthy article you should definitely read which explains that BSD is the The single Greatest Piece of Software Ever, with the broadest impact on the world, was BSD

http://www.informationweek.com/whats-the-greatest-software-e...?

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To all intents and purposes, FreeBSD is dead. If not yet dead, FreeBSD is a carcass whipped out by Apple and friends to say they "support" open-source.

OS X and others have leeched off BSD and made billions, yet every December, this year being the same, FreeBSD has to whip out the begging bowl to raise funding.

Yes, some large corporations employ some of the FreeBSD folk, but what would happen if they stopped employing them? Would FreeBSD be able to build a strong community of developers to accelerate development? I doubt it.

Linux is in a much healthier place and I attribute much of that to licensing as well as technical excellence. The GPL has helped foster an active community around Linux, one that does not allow corporate vultures to simply scavenge off the best bits and usurp direction of the project.

This entire statement seems rather disingenuous; to claim that Linux is not molded by corporate interests is questionable if not outright wrong (e.g. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/sites/main/files/publications...).

I think BSD lost momentum because of the AT&T litigation back in the early 1990s and that momentum helped and continues to help Linux achieve the success that it has.

It is possible to praise Linux without burying BSD.

The only piece of BSD in Windows I know of was the network stack up until Vista (when MS rewrote it completely). There's nothing left by now.

Not true: http://www.silug.org/lists/silug-discuss/200403/msg00165.htm...

I'm pretty sure the ftp.exe client program had some BSD bits at one time. There might have been some small things like that. Nothing big.

An intern could rewrite that over the weekend. What's your point?

I don't quite understand your question. ygra asserted that the Windows network stack was taken from BSD. This was never true and was kind of a pernicious rumor for a long time. I just assume Greg Lehey's word on it is enough for most people.

There were a few little odds and ends that popped up with BSD license notifications over the years, like the ftp client IIRC. As you say, little utilities that don't amount to much. What is YOUR point?

I believe the choice of BSD kernel of OS X was laregely due to the permissiveness of the BSD license v. GPL, not underlying kernel advantages.

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